


brechtian spectator

by familiar



Series: MFAverse [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Art School, Anal Fingering, Art, Double Penetration, Food Issues, Friends With Benefits, Graduate School, M/M, Past Drug Addiction, Recreational Drug Use, Threesome - M/M/M, if i tag this with "art" will it think I mean this is a piece of art, it is not itself art, it's about art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:33:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25773646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/familiar/pseuds/familiar
Summary: Three people does not constitute an orgy -- but Parse is in town over Labor Day, so Bitty bakes a pie and packs a bag and heads over.
Relationships: Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Kent "Parse" Parson/Jack Zimmermann, Kent "Parse" Parson/Jack Zimmermann
Series: MFAverse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2088417
Comments: 8
Kudos: 38





	brechtian spectator

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU where everyone is getting an MFA at Samwell -- with one notable exception. That is all you really need to know here! [Tomato](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomato_greens/) came up with this concept and I seized on it and we've been bouncing it back and forth since, like, May. There's some more background [here](https://camilliar.tumblr.com/post/624088116018495488/camilliar-tomatowrites-last-but-not-least-i) if you like background before you read things but I don't think you need it for this one story.
> 
> This was beta read by [blithelybonny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blithelybonny/pseuds/blithelybonny), who has helped write some of the [best](https://archiveofourown.org/series/812469) [intricate](https://archiveofourown.org/series/876810) OMGCP series and was therefore very reassuring; also found many typos. Thank you!

It is truly unpleasant trying to finish a pie while Lardo is spray painting canvasses on the front porch; it’s positively drippy out, and the hissing sounds don’t help. What is air conditioning when it’s a 40-year-old window unit and you’re not standing directly in front of it? But if Bitty gets to the orgy without something in his hands, he doesn’t know what he’ll do with them.

“It’s not really an orgy, is it, if it’s three people?” Lardo asks, when she comes in to dig an Arizona Arnold Palmer out of the fridge. Her fingertips are neon green, neon yellow, pale gold.

“Why can’t you do that at the studio?” Bitty asks.

“Closed for Labor Day. Why can’t you do that at Jack’s?” She cracks the can open with her dirty colored fingers. God knows what’s under the nails.

“And you’re an expert on orgies.” Bitty squats in front of the oven, hoping for bubbles. Nothing yet. Pops back up. Good to be limber, probably, for where he’s going.

“I’ve lived a little,” she says. “What’re you gonna do with that?”

Bitty doesn’t miss a beat. “Eat it.”

* * *

Except that Parse opens the door, shirtless in his boxer-briefs, and stares down at what Bitty’s offering.

“I don’t eat pie. When you said you were baking something I thought it would be, like, brownies.”

“Any idiot can make brownies.” Parse has stepped away from the door and left it wide open. “You could make brownies, if you wanted.”

It’s a nice place—not like the Haus, where every conceivable fluid has already been tracked in—so Bitty slips in and drops his bag and takes his Keds off, continuing to balance the pie. It’s still warm, in the fluted ceramic dish he got from Anthropologie when he was fucking that guy who worked the register at the branch in Lenox mall. It’s a plummy color with a splotch of chintz pattern that rips down the middle. Can’t see it when there’s a pie in there. Jack usually eats enough pie to reveal the chintz after a few rounds of dry humping. It was probably worth squatting on that guy’s dick a few times for the employee discount, Bitty figures. He’d do it again if there were an Anthropologie any closer than Copley, but it’s hardly worth the roundtrip Amtrak fare.

The best thing about Jack’s apartment—in a building where many professors live, a carved-up old textile mill on the river—is its two-story windows, which get light all day that moves across the concrete floor so steadily Jack doesn’t need a clock. Then again, Jack’s rarely on time for anything, and apparently not even his own orgy, so maybe he does.

Today the shades are drawn—deployed—whatever it’s called when they’re on electric rollers operated by remote control. It’s too tall to bother with a cord, Bitty supposes. Once he read the texts on Jack’s phone with his dad, which were mostly in French but he worked out “$1895 pour Novembre svp” and looked up that, yes, that is what a one-bed two-bath with Jack’s floorplan would cost.

“So you eat brownies but not pie?” Bitty asks, setting it on the counter.

Parse is swigging Gatorade Zero right from the fridge—the white kind, what flavor even is that? He recaps it, replaces it, closes the door with his thigh. He’s got huge thighs, as thick with muscle as Bitty’s ever seen. He thinks about those thighs on his ears, on his dick. He wasn’t hard on the walk over—now he is.

“What kind is it?”

“Peach melba.”

“Oh?”

“It’s mostly peaches, but I activate the tapioca in raspberry coulis—do you care?—and I make vanilla sugar and that’s, well, the sugar I use, I guess. Do you care? You don’t care.”

“Not especially, no.”

“I figured. Where’s Jack?”

“Douching.”

“Y’all didn’t start without me?”

“Oh no, we did.”

“When’d you get in?”

“Last night.”

“Wondered if I’d beat you here.”

“Nah.” Parse’s forearms hit the counter; his biceps have honest-to-god veins. He is more stacked than anyone Bitty has ever seen in his life, and he used to regularly pick up at the Georgia State pool, where the frat stars would hop in the hot tub after two hours of reps. “I drove up from my mom’s.”

He’s from—Bitty’s forgotten. It wasn’t important, probably. “Where’s that?”

“Nowhere I can’t stand to get away from. Albany.”

“How long are you here for?”

“In Massachusetts? Or—on the East Coast?”

Bitty shrugs, because—whatever.

“I figured I’d stay a couple of nights. I don’t want to be away too long. My mom’s watching my cat.”

“You got a cat?”

“Yeah. I don’t like to leave him for too long.”

Other people, Bitty knows, would ask Kent something _about_ the cat, like what’s its name, or what’s it look like, or do you have a picture? He surely does; Bitty can’t imagine anyone not having a camera roll stacked with their own pet. If it were a puppy, Bitty might follow up, but cats just kind of give him a bad feeling: the way they climb, the way they hiss. The way they wander around unfettered. It’s eerie.

“What’d you do with your summer?”

The truth is, not much. The highlight of studentship, really, is that there’s nothing to do. Ambitious people get internships, Bitty thinks. He mostly gets up around 2, has Uber Eats bring him a $12 Annie’s smoothie (they’re $6.95 in-store), bakes, realizes it’s nearly dinner time, gets high with Shitty on the porch and shares sexploits, of which Shitty typically has very few; sometimes he’ll share Lardo’s. He’s a good listener, though, and doesn’t judge Bitty’s journey through the dregs of the Samwell summer hookup circuit, even though it’s cliché. Would Parse judge? Bitty wonders, for a moment, if Parse would think it a good thing that, in addition to sleeping with Jack, Bitty is also sleeping with very nearly everybody still trapped on this campus for the summer. Not knowing someone, Bitty thinks, it’s difficult to say if they’d find it reassuring that you weren’t after some kind of exclusive set-up with their — their _whatever_ Jack and Kent were. Are? On the other hand, Parse might not love the thought of whatever Bitty is exposing Jack to, by proxy. But it’s not like Jack isn’t doing his own thing? It’s really none of this guy’s business.

“I went to Georgia,” he finally answers, “over the Fourth of July. Stayed with my parents. Saw friends in Atlanta, stayed a few nights there.” He ate stacks of golden pancakes at Ria’s, and walked along the crowds of Confederate headstones across the street. He went to three openings, and it reminded him why he’d left Georgia in the first place: the same artists, the same venues, the same work over and over again. The same reviewers from the same publications. The same friends, the ones who thought there was nothing wrong with the Atlanta art scene. “That’s the problem,” Bitty had told them, mashing caramelized banana into the pecan-studded pancakes on his fork. “There _is_ nothing wrong with it.” At least Samwell’s a place you can’t get stuck in. You do school, you leave. The problem with the big city—and whatever Atlanta’s faults, it is, to Bitty, who grew up outside of it, _the_ big city—is that you have to make cause to leave it.

“That’s my birthday,” Parse says. It’s really hard to look him in the eye; he’s got nice eyes, which look washed-out gray in the shade of Jack’s apartment. But, god, there’s so much else to look at.

“You were born on the Fourth of July?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a thing. I got an uncle who’s born on Christmas.”

“I imagine that sucks. The two best days, and they get mashed into one.”

“Or it just heightens everything! Whenever they come to Christmas we make sure he gets his own cake. What’s it like having a birthday on July Fourth?”

“I think for me it’s kinda special, because it really is the only part of the year when you’re not working. I mean, there’s a lot of training, and there’s promo and PR stuff, but it’s mostly chill, relatively chill. The awards are over at that point. I do usually end up at the awards.” Kent pauses. “The NHL Awards,” he clarifies.

“You ever win one?”

A weird half-smile; Bitty kind of wishes he could do one like that. “Yeah,” Parse says, drily. “Couple times.”

“Oh, that’s nice. Congrats.”

“Thanks. You nervous?”

“Bout what?”

“Jack said you’d never done this before?”

“Oh! Well, I haven’t—why’re you looking at me like that?”

“I haven’t either.”

“Oh, no?”

“No.” Bitty expects more, but that’s all he says about it. “What are you working on?”

“What am I ... working on?”

“Yeah. You’re new media, right? You do like internet stuff?”

“Kinda,” says Bitty, only because he has no fucking idea how to explain what it is that he does—or doesn’t do, as far as things go. Jack must’ve told him—or maybe last time they met Bitty said something? Why does Parse remember what his degree’s in, anyway? God, Bitty thinks, I am completely bankrupt, I’ve got utterly nothing. The portfolio he turned in for spring semester wasn’t so much shit as it was underdeveloped. He doesn’t know why he cares if he sounds like an idiot in front of Kent Parson, who’s not here for his artistic talents (such as they are) or even the pie he brought, which isn’t nothing, since it’s not like Jack really keeps a lot of food around. They didn’t even know he was bringing a pie. And Parse is kind of looking at him, like he thinks it’s weird that Bitty hasn’t yet said anything about what’s he’s actually working on—

The only thing that saves Bitty from having to bullshit is that Jack comes downstairs.

“Look at you,” Parse says, and it’s soft as hell.

Jack doesn’t look especially great or anything, Bitty thinks. He’s wearing a generic floppy T-shirt and boxers. The boxers are just blue, nothing interesting; the shirt is white with a stretched-out crew neck, and it falls off Jack’s shoulder slightly if he pulls it to the side, which he does because he thinks it looks sexy. It sort of does, but Bitty thinks Jack looks better when his hair is brushed, which it’s not, or when it’s cut short, which it definitely isn’t. It gets shaggy if it’s got any length to it at all, and his bangs do this horrible thing where they fall open when they’re long. Somebody must have told him it looked good like that. It was probably Parse, Bitty figures. That, or one of his incomprehensible parents. That boring shirt probably came off a sample rack somewhere. It probably retails for like 500 dollars. Bitty’s seen it before; it’s definitely Jack’s fucking shirt. He probably put it on just to get railed. He’s all red under there, and the sight of it makes Bitty tighten up further in his own little shorts. There really is nothing as provocative as beard burn on someone else’s pale skin. Parse is blond, his stubble translucent. Bitty can almost imagine it on his fingertips, on his thighs, on his tongue.

“You clean, Zimms?”

The way Jack rests an elbow on Parse’s shoulder is what Bitty pictures when he pictures the intimacy that eludes him: the janky posture of two bodies contorting just to fit together; jabbing the pointiest body part into a hiked-up plane; the willingness to bear a weight. Like Parse’s body was just built to support Jack’s. Like Jack would topple over if he didn’t have Parse to rest on. Jack doesn’t even answer the question. It probably didn’t need to be asked.

“Hey, Bittle,” Jack says. He sounds sleepy, content. What were they doing before, Bitty wonders? “You brought pie.”

“Of course I did! And I brought—something else.”

“What’d you bring, Bittle?”

“You’ll see!” Bitty scrambles to the doorway, where he’s left his bag. What’s in there, mostly, are his personal effects—briefs for tonight, briefs for tomorrow, another tank, deodorant, eau de toilette, this and that—phone charger, yes. Stuffed rabbit, god, why’d he put _that_ into his backpack? Just leave that right there. And poppers, of course. Bitty grabs one, scurries back to the kitchen, where Jack is full-leaning on Parse now, and Parse is finishing the end of a thought that Bitty can’t hear, and likely isn’t meant to.

He holds up the little bottle. “Shitty sends these with love.”

And Parse, immediately: “No thanks.”

“Parse is straight-edge.”

“No,” Bitty says.

“I’m obviously not straight-edge.”

“Or straight in any actual capacity?”

“Bittle, that’s awful.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty corny, I wasn’t going to say.” Kent picks up one of the poppers, reading the label. “You’ve seen me drink, Bittle.”

“You got vodka in that Gatorade?”

Parse rolls his eyes. “I’m not a child.”

“Back in the day, like when we’d go to parties sometimes.”

“Yeah, when we were children.” He puts the popper down.

Jack picks it up immediately. “Butyl?”

“Amyl, Shitty said. Why, you got a preference?”

“No. Just curious.” Jack is palming the little vial. He looks up at Bitty. “You wanna roll?”

Bitty is indifferent. He’s never done it before. “If you do.”

“Mine’ll probably hit soon.”

“Jack, jesus.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Bitty shrugs. “It’s not like I’m planning on getting work done this weekend. Why not?”

“It’s not like you can’t take a dick!” Parse shouts after Jack, as he goes to get MDMA for Bitty. Quieter, he says, “It’s not like he can’t take a dick, Bittle.”

Bitty almost feels bad for Parse, who slams the fridge door when he goes to get his Gatorade. He slams the bottle down on the counter, too. “Yeah,” he says, softly, trying to be understanding. “I know.”

“Shitty didn’t want to come?”

“He wasn’t invited,” Bitty says. “Three’s a good number, right?”

“Fuck if I know.” The Gatorade is nearly empty. “He’s into chicks, right?”

“I guess, as much as anyone.”

“You ever done it?”

“What, with a gal?” He tries to make it sound a little campy: _gal_ , rolling it out with a drawl.

Of course Parse doesn’t react. “Yeah.”

Bitty just laughs, one of the forced laughs he’s learned to do while vlogging. He’s not sure what Parse’s face is telling him—so he stops and says, “Yeah. I mean, they’re always around. To be interesting, I guess.” He searches Parse for something, anything—but the brittleness Bitty can sense in his interactions with Jack doesn’t come through when they’re just talking. He’s got this look—this real guarded, simmering look. “Just a couple times. College stuff. You?”

“Fuck no,” Parse says, voice hard. “I never went to college.”

The pill Jack comes back with is acid green and lumpy, whatever shape it’s supposed to be completely incomprehensible. It looks like a Flintstones chewable vitamin.

“Glad we closed the shades,” Jack says. He puts a hand to his brow like a visor, and Bitty sees his pupils are bigger than they should be in what’s a pretty dark room.

“Here.” Parse thrusts the bottle in Bitty’s general direction.

“This’s probably got your spit in it.”

“Bittle,” says Jack.

“I wouldn’t worry about it too much.” When Parse grins, it’s insane; he’s got a million straight white teeth. He licks his lips like a serial killer.

“You’ve got such nice teeth,” Bitty says, almost forgetting to try to be cool about things. He feels like the pill is stuck in his throat, but he knows that’s just the mucus being scraped off his esophagus, or something.

“Thanks.”

Now Jack puts his hand in Parse’s hair. Jack’s T-shirt is hanging off him, showing off more of his collarbone. “They’re all fake,” he says. He’s got a big dumb smile on his face, like his jaw muscles have forgotten how to clench.

“Like, veneers?”

“Implants,” Parse says. “I got a bridge here, see.” He taps his bottom teeth.

To try to wash the stuck feeling out, Bitty takes another swig, finishing the bottle. It’s fucking _cherry_.

“Am I gonna like this?” Bitty asks.

“You mean, the drugs?”

“I hope you don’t mean the sex,” Parse says. “or the Gatorade.”

”You’re with people.” Jack is weirdly quiet. Of course, Jack is quiet a lot; he gets intense and he gets serious, and when Bitty’s gone with him into the darkroom it’s been a mostly silent experience, just humming bulbs, clacking timers, chemicals splashing while prints flop around. Jack won’t fuck in a darkroom, which is curious, because it strikes Bitty as the perfect place to fuck, you know, it’s basically a dungeon. But this is a different kind of quiet in the timbre of his voice, and Bitty is not sure if it’s the drugs or the general sense of trepidation he must feel about the sex, yes—Bitty feels it, and maybe Jack feels it, too. “If you’re going to do drugs,” he continues, “it’s really nice to do them with people.”

“Nothing bad’s gonna happen to you on molly,” Parse says.

“You might get kinda bummed out. But that’s really the most.”

“You’re perfectly safe, though, it’s not like other stuff.”

“I mean the sex,” Bitty says, though he didn’t.

“Well, that’s better with people, too.” Jack grins at his own joke. He never really stops grinning from that point.

“Not always.”

“With the right people, eh?” Jack kisses Parse’s bare shoulder. Gets his—yes, welp, Bitty sees his teeth sink down a little.

“There it is!” Parse hoists Jack, full-body, up into his arms bridal-style. Jack yelps—yelps! something Bitty’s never heard him do—and buries his lips in Parse’s accessible hairline. “You wanna do this?”

“I always wanna do it with you,” Jack says, wrapping his arms around the back of Kent’s neck.

Bitty stands there, watching--

“Bittle,” Jack calls after him. “You coming?”

* * *

The issue isn’t whether Jack can take a dick; it’s whether he can take two.

“This is such crazy high bullshit.” Parse has shrugged out of his underwear, finally, and is stroking his dick. It’s nice, Bitty thinks, in his capacity as an aesthete: pink where it should be, narrow where it should be. They don’t always come so proportionate, though they sometimes come thicker, and often come longer. Everyone’s got their strengths. Bitty has been enchanted by Jack’s, which he loves to see when it’s soft because it goes from a polite, restful thing to an extension of Jack’s entire self: languid, slightly crooked.

Bitty’s not sure if he just likes dicks a lot, or if it’s got something to do with taking ecstasy. Both, probably. Maybe they call it molly now, like Parse did. “Is ecstasy the same as ‘molly’?” Bitty asks. He’s never known much about club drugs.

Parse says, “Probably.”

Jack just lets his legs fall open, seemingly pretty high now. For all the weird fanfic he’s read where two guys fuck and the writer calls their pupils “blown,” in Bitty’s experience fucking and eye dilation don’t _really_ go together like that—except for Jack, right now, who’s got big black glassy ones that make him look like a cross because the anime cutesie-poo version of himself and some kind of vacant sex monster, or both, cause what’s the actual difference?

Oh, yeah, Bitty realizes—this shit has kicked in.

Somehow, Jack is still in his shirt. Someone’s tugging at Bitty’s tank; he is still fully clothed, and while he’s not sure who’s pawing at him, he might as well get undressed. The outlines of everyone’s shoulders twitch slightly on the edges of Bitty’s vision, and the mound of pillows trembles at the head of the bed, against the wall. Everything has a subtle undercurrent, like static electricity pricking under the skin—but it’s good, it feels good. Everything feels good.

Jack and Parse are making out now, and Bitty is somehow content to just watch from a distance, like it’s the best porn he’s ever seen, and the greatest romance to boot. That’s what those dumb fanfics do on a good day, what art does when it works: mash eroticism and romance together into total marriage, sinking one into the other until they can’t be pried apart. It’s inconvenient, see, because Bitty’s been _invited_ to this—this _orgy_ , this whatever—and maybe he’d like to feel someone’s lips on his lips, too. But the longer he watches them, the more in love he is with both of them separately but especially together. What a really special thing to see, Bitty thinks. I am blessed to get to see this. So blessed, just blessed. Wow. When Jack kisses he makes little gasping noises, little chokes of pleasure, and Bitty has heard them radiating out around his own sinuses when they make out. Now he’s feeding them to Parse, and it’s different when it’s a performance _for_ him and not a performance he’s coaxing out of Jack, that both of them are making together.

At some point—naturalistically, Bitty figures; at what point it is he can’t truly say, as time is moving however it moves and Bitty is now himself outside of it—two things make themselves known to Bitty: he is palming his own dick through his shorts, and Parse’s hand has slipped from Jack’s jaw down his side and behind Jack’s balls.

“Bittle,” Parse says, “do you know where the lube is?”

“God,” he says. “Yep. Yeah.”

“Can you grab—”

There’s a tube in Jack’s bedside table, that Bitty knows—but there’s a bigger one, a pump, in the bathroom. It’s just off the bedroom, up in the loft. When Bitty snaps the light on, everything sparkles. The piles of towels (from douching?) are gelatinous, Jack’s insane sticky notes to himself on his mirror flicker like fluorescent light bulbs. Whatever they say, Bitty can’t read French, so he just appreciates that they’re there, that every one of them contains a little of Jack’s essence poured from his brain and out through his pen. Truly, this bathroom is the most beautiful sight he’s ever seen. It makes him sigh.

“And condoms,” Parse shouts, so Bitty grabs a few of those, too.

They’re making out again, but Parse stops with a smacking noise (like in a comic, Bitty thinks) and says thanks, then pats the bed. Bitty is enrapt by how soft he is, how gentle, how patient—how very the opposite of how a man with a veritable eight-pack should be. It makes Bitty want to kiss him, and he does, just briefly on the shoulder, as Parse strokes Jack’s hole like it’s the most precious thing in the world, and whispers little secrets Bitty can’t make out against Jacks calves.

“Are y’all always so sweet?” Bitty curls around Parse’s bicep, looking down at the bounty before them: Jack, with an arm thrown over his eyes, the other flat on his stomach under his shirt, his legs splayed in two nonsensical directions, one on Parse’s shoulder and a foot pressing into his oblique.

“He’s sweet,” Jack says, not bothering to uncover his eyes.

“That’s so sweet,” says Bitty.

“I’m not sweet. We can go hard.”

“I like it hard,” Jack murmurs.

“It’s soooo intense that way.” Bitty can hear every “o” when he says it. What a drug, he thinks. God, it’s all so perfect.

“I’m gonna do two fingers, then you do two fingers—well, start with one, so that I’m like,” he sticks two out, “and then you go—” He slides the index finger of his other hand, the right, against the two crooked fingers already extended. “Then if that’s okay,” a pull-out motion, and four fingers laid over each other, which Parse thrusts toward Jack’s glistening ass.

“Pass me an amyl?” Jack weakly gestures toward the table.

“I forgot!” Bitty pops up, scrambles to get them from the floor. “I’ve only done these once—god, at this real sketchy party, like? In the basement of some nasty East Atlanta club where they had a ladies night, but you know what that’s code for?”

“What’s that code for?” Parse is using the ball of his hand to grease Jack’s ass with a palmful of silicone lube.

“You know, gay stuff.”

“The South is so dark,” Parse says.

“No it ain’t,” says Bitty. “I mean, yes it is, but you don’t get to say it.”

Jack sniffs first, and they all pass it around, watching for each other’s reactions. Bitty is surprised that Parse does it, too—he seems generally drug-avoidant, if Bitty’s got the right impression. But then, the amyl doesn’t do what the pill did; it doesn’t shift everything forever, pulling up the dregs of all experience into a new height of conscious elation. It’s more like a whoosh of sumptuous energy, which lasts only long enough to shove four fingers into Jack.

“That good?” Parse asks him. Again—soft. Concerned-like. Bitty could go to sleep in his words.

“It’s fine.”

“Fine like it’s not comfortable or fine like it’s not enough?”

Bitty’s dick is leaking at the sight of Jack’s hole stretched around their fingers. Being right-handed, the way Bitty is craning over to get purchase is awkward. But every minute twitch against the pads of his fingers scintillates like the bridge in a remix—ghostly, distant, all-encompassing.

“Not enough.” Jack covers his face with his hands and laughs, brief and dry. “Parse, come on.”

“This is your fantasy, Jack.”

“It’s too real,” he says. “So act like it’s a fantasy.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means both of you fuck me.” Jack uncovers his eyes. God, Bitty thinks, they’re so black, black on black, all of his brilliant cornflower irises drowned in eerie want. You could swim in those things, couldn’t you? Before they were placid oceans, and now they’re black lagoons. It’s not so much pupils blown as it is eyes eaten out by intoxicated lust. They glitter like his sweaty skin glitters. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.

“Wow,” says Bitty.

“You enjoying this?” Parse slips his fingers out.

“It’s perfect.” His own words shimmer like bells tied to the handle at a convenience store.

“You’re bigger.” It sounds very nonchalant. “You go in first.”

Parse, Bitty realizes, probably can’t hear the bells.

* * *

Sex lasts forever when you’re rolling, Bitty realizes. When he flips to his stomach and cranes over Parse’s thighs to take a look at the living room below them, the melon glow of sunset is burning around the perimeter of Jack’s shades, and a mere sliver of penumbra twilight is glinting off the fridge. They’ve all been crammed into the bed for hours, and Bitty feels like he’ll never be able to get out of it, because some shallow feeling is keeping him there.

Two fingers brush his ass. “How’s the comedown?”

Jack is sitting up against the headboard, his tee on inside-out. It’s hard to believe he hasn’t crested 30; when his face is at rest, he looks so old, the skin around his eyes so saggy. Bitty’s grandmother turned him on to Clinique eye cream when he was in high school—not in the sense that she wanted him to use it, but he overheard her telling one of his older girl cousins that “it’s kept me firmer than your daddy’s faith in Jesus”—a weird thing to say about eye cream, and maybe a little sacrilegious, but he got the message, and helped himself to a pot of it from the medicine cabinet in the powder room the next time he was in there looking for Q-tips to get under the lip of his Moomaw’s good silver pitcher. Jack doesn’t seem like the type of use eye cream; he doesn’t seem like he does much of anything preventative at all.

“Not the best feeling,” Jack says, before Bitty realizes he hasn’t said anything.

“Guess not,” Bitty says. “I mean, it’s not being hungover.”

“No. It’s much worse. This is why people take drugs, Bittle.”

“This?”

“To avoid this,” Jack says. “You’re sitting here, you’re depressed as fuck, your ass feels like it’s gonna prolapse—”

“I think that’s really serious?”

“—and you think, what would stop this? Some blow, I guess, or whatever.”

“Now you’re gonna do coke?”

“I don’t have any.” Jack sighs. “Parse would kill me.” Parse is sleeping, his feet brushing the back of Bitty’s neck as he stares up at Jack—who leans over to flip on the bedside lamp, rubs his eyes, and looks up. “That was fun,” he says, as if to no one.

“Was it?”

Jack is quiet for a moment. “ _Was_ it?” he asks Bitty.

“Hold up.” It takes nearly everything Bity has—physically, psychologically—to push himself to his knees, and off the bed. His dick nearly grazes Parse’s ass as he climbs over him. He looks back to see if Jack’s noticed; Jack is smiling again, and looking down at Parse. It’s fond, or maybe content—at least, as far as contentment goes for Jack. Bitty wonders: if a man smiled at me like that, what would I do with it? Wipe it off his face, probably. Stuff it full of pie. Now, there’s an idea.

It’s still on the counter, still fragrant. He flips on the light under the vent hood; the forks are in the drawer to the right of the stove, the dessert plates on one of the pullouts in the kitchen island. Well, they’re not dessert plates, they’re salad plates, and Bitty’s not ashamed to know the difference. Salad plates are really too big for pie—unless you’re serving it with ice cream. Into the freezer—of course Jack doesn’t have vanilla ice cream. He doesn’t have any ice cream. Does anyone care? Truly, fuck it. He leaves with the pie, and with the forks. He leaves the light over the range on.

Upstairs, before he sees them, Bitty hears Parse saying, “Your ass is fine. Kind goopy, but—” When Bitty gets to the landing where the actual bedroom is, he’s cupping Jack’s behind, stroking the meat of it near the cleft with his thumb, and kissing Jack’s stomach—and Jack is fiddling with Parse’s hair where it sprays over his forehead in awkward cowlicks.

“Bittle.” Jack looks up. “What kind of pie is that?”

It just comes out: “Y’all are so sweet.” A beat of weird silence. Bitty walks over, sets it down on the duvet. Jack’s probably never changed the damn thing. Bitty’s got forks, too. Eat it from the plate, why not? The damn bed can’t get any filthier. “It’s peach melba.”

“What’s a melba?”

“It’s got vanilla in it,” says Parse.

“I used a raspberry coulis to make the thickener and all the sugar in it is vanilla sugar.”

“What’s vanilla sugar?”

“It’s when after you use the inside of the vanilla bean you just kinda, you know, put the pod in some sugar, which makes it taste like vanilla.”

“Does vanilla go with peaches?” Parse asks. “I don’t really think of it as going with, like, fruit.”

“Why don’t you try it?”

“They’re good,” Jack says. “His pies.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“I bake ’em for Annie’s.”

“Parse, he bakes pies for the coffeeshop.”

“What, like, for coffee?”

“No, they _pay_ me. For my pies. Because I’m good.”

“I don’t doubt you’re good,” Parse says, and Bitty can sort of tell he means it because he’s not making that half-lidded sexy expression he makes most of the time Bitty’s seen him. He’s got a theory that you find out what a person’s disposition really is after you’ve slept with him. If you don’t really care about a person, you don’t bother to stick around. And that’s fine, sometimes; sometimes you don’t really need to know a person very well, or at all. Parse is all wide-eyed, maybe because he managed to get in a little nap. “I just don’t personally love pies. How much does one of these run?”

“I sell ’em to Annie’s for 24 bucks.”

“That’s a pricey pie.”

“Well, they sell ’em by the slice for six-fifty, so we’re all doing just fine.” A beat, and Bitty adds, “My pies always sell out.”

He hands a fork to Jack, whose fingers go straight from Parse’s hair to the implement with which he’s digging into the pie over which Bitty sweated in an under-ventilated kitchen.

“Why don’t _you_ sell pie by the slice?”

“Probably for the same reason you don’t like personally sell tickets to hockey games? I ain’t a distribution center.”

Parse sits up, brushes some flakes away from Jack’s lips. Smiles fondly. Turns to Bitty. “You sure you’re an artist?”

He doesn’t miss a beat: “No.”

“Bittle, this is great.” Jack’s fork dings against the ceramic, and Bitty imagines it’s hitting the chintz.

“What’s it taste like?”

“You wanna try it?”

Bitty digs into his own pie. Parse _should_ try it, Bitty thinks, it’s very good. He doesn’t typically eat his pies, he realizes, but he’s hungry, and it’s just—it’s just there. This is converse to his usual feeling of, it’s just there, so why bother?

“Yeah, okay. Uh, where’s a fork?”

Bitty grabs one. “Here,” he says, but it’s not quick enough; Jack has already scooped a forkful from the pie plate, and fed it directly to Parse.

“What do you think?” Jack asks.

Parse wipes his mouth, swallows. “I’m not getting the vanilla.”

Bitty finds this annoying. “It’s subtle.”

“Okay.”

“Vanilla’s one of those things you put in to make other stuff pop out. It broadens the flavor of the whole pie generally.”

“Does it? Okay.”

“Well, I think it does!”

Jack seems happy, anyway, or at least he’s eating it.

“You can sleep over,” Parse says, generously offering Jack’s apartment. Maybe he doesn’t know Bitty’s slept there enough times, or maybe he doesn’t care. If this were Bitty’s life, he’d probably want Jack to himself, and perhaps he’d want Jack to want the night for themselves, too. It’s forever since Bitty’s had a real, permanent lover, and his lone experience wasn’t that serious, so it’s possible he just doesn’t understand how this works. But, he figures, there must be some kind of alone- _alone_ language they speak together—irritating Canadian French, maybe?—and habits they fall into when no one else is there. It’s like the way Bitty’s mother is snippy with him in their kitchen, but out in the world when ears are open, she’s girlish and her voice chimes. What’s the snippy version of Jack and Kent, he wonders?

Then again, if what he’s seen is the chimey version, maybe he doesn’t need to find out what they’re like when he’s not there.

They order cheeseburgers; while Parse is on Grubhub, Bitty offers to go get them; Parse rolls his eyes and clicks “I’m trying to save the planet.” It’s now dark out, and Bitty doesn’t know what time it is anymore until the buzzer rings and he has to get his shorts, where his phone is still stuffed into the pocket, in order to find out that it’s nearly 10. A lot of time has passed as they figured out what to get with the burgers. Bitty hates how sweet potato fries get soggy when they’ve been steaming in a paper boat on some courier’s back as he bikes over the river. Ideally, he’d put these in the oven to crisp them up, but right after he’s turned it on, Parse stumbles downstairs and starts eating them out of the container. Bitty turns the oven off. He lets Parse pour him some Gatorade; he eats a fry and it’s chalky, but he’s so hungry suddenly that he really can’t be bothered to care. His burger is slick with separated ketchup. Parse has apparently ordered a turkey burger with avocado on it. Avocado on a burger! Bitty would vomit.

“That one’s Jack’s?” Parse asks, opening up the crinkly silver paper. He starts poking at it, trying to lift the bun off even though it’s melted to the double patties with American cheese. It must be fine, because he throws it on a plate with a handful of regular fries and three ketchup packets, flops his own burger on there for good measure, and asks, “You coming?”

They picnic on the bed and it’s quiet, mostly. No music, no TV, or the weird YouTube videos and docuseries that pass for TV on a laptop in the world of Jack’s apartment. Bitty wants to ask Parse questions, like, “Do you watch TV?” and “What kind of TV do you watch?” and “How can the two of you possibly be so quiet?” All there is filling the apartment now is the oily smell of cold fast food, the cycle of the air conditioner, and the indirect yellow light in all of Jack’s lamps. For a moment, while Jack is chewing his burger, Bitty thinks he looks a little better than he did, but then it becomes clear that Jack understands lighting, after all. Parse looks good, too, all golden in the warm light and still kind of flush from fucking. He really savors his burger. When Jack’s gobbled his down, Parse shares his, just holding it out for Jack to take little bites of.

It’s—well, it’s incredibly creepy, actually, but something about it pricks at Bitty’s heart. His burger is blue cheese, barbecue sauce, frizzled onions, peppercorn sauce. Parse’s had dijon on it, apparently, because some of it’s smeared on Jack’s lips after he takes a bite. Bitty knows his shades of yellow.

“Zimms, here.” Without asking, Parse wipes it away with the bed of his thumb.

Jack says nothing, hardly reacts. He lets Parse’s thumb graze his skin. Bitty wonders if—but he’s never tried. He’s never tried it on Jack and he’s never tried it on anyone.

Whatever this is between them, Bitty thinks, whatever they call it—and he doesn’t know what they call it, hasn’t heard either of them define it—he doesn’t know if he’ll ever have this with anyone. Let someone feed you, burger to mouth, to say nothing of tolerating the mess that surely must have formed on Jack’s side of the bed by now. Parse is gonna sleep in this bed? Well, Bitty thinks, who I am to judge; I’m eating in it. Everything feels slow and belabored, like there’s a single-second delay on his own life. I’m a real artist now, Bitty thinks, now that I know what coming down from a three-way on ecstasy is like.

When they’re all done with the burgers, Bitty thinks finally, _finally_ , Jack is going to get up. But he doesn’t get up—he lies down, fully embracing one of his pillows.

“Zimms, you tired?”

“Shutup,” Jack says, slurred together like it’s one word.

“Don’t you wanna brush your teeth?” Bitty asks. He’s suddenly grateful that he brought even a small bag with some things in it. Be prepared, and all that—he was never a Boy Scout, but he’s wound up in enough places. What time is it? Is it even late?

“I’ll brush later.”

“Or change your clothes?” Parse asks; Jack is just wearing that same T-shirt.

But Jack doesn’t seem like he wants to engage with it, just closes his eyes and says, “You staying, Bits? There’s extra blankets downstairs.”

“Where’s that?”

“Laundry room, Bittle knows.”

Bitty does know what Jack means, not so much what he’d call a room per se (at his parents’ the laundry room is like the size of the first floor of the Haus, quite frankly) but behind a pocket door there’s a stackable and, next to it, some wire shelving with bedding stuff—a blanket or two, pillowcases, extra sheets and whatever. Usually Jack will help change the linens, if Bitty insists. Maybe it’s not his MO, Bitty figures, maybe he just lets me does it because I don’t want to sleep in a soiled bed. Then again, they don’t usually take drugs when they do it, or at least, not in the same kind of way. Also, doing it with _two_ people feels just slightly more taxing; Bitty realizes this as he yawns into a flat sheet. It’s just gray, sateen. Being from the Georgia, Bitty would say it’s better to pick percale for summer, but he’s suddenly too tired to find another kind of sheet, if indeed Jack has another kind of sheet—he’s never thought about it before, he realizes. Everything is moving very sluggishly.

“You really know your way around Jack’s apartment.”

“Well, we have sex a lot.” As soon as Bitty says it, he wonders what he’d think if someone said it to him, about someone he considered, well, his.

Parse seems distinctly unbothered, though. “You good?” he asks. “I guess, you want me to help, uh, make the bed?” He pauses. “Couch?”

“I’ll be fine. You like biscuits?”

“Why?”

“I’ll make breakfast in the morning?”

“That’s nice,” says Parse. “Why?”

“So you don’t have to order out again.”

“You already made a pie?”

“Yeah, and what’s left isn’t enough for breakfast. It’s a nice kitchen, just let me.”

“Oh. Thanks. No, I don’t really like biscuits.”

“Okay. Then what do you like?”

“Eggs?” Parse shrugs. “I dunno, just make something Jack likes. Or ask me in the morning.”

“Do you really not have any preferences?”

Parse takes the pile of linens—and it truly is a pile, barely folded, not that Bitty himself could explain the difference between knowing and not knowing how to fold a fitted sheet; you can do it, he thinks, or you can’t—and carries it to the couch. “Which side?” he asks.

“I guess the long way, not the chaise.”

Dumping them on the cushions, Parse puts his hands on his hips. God, his body; it’s so unreal Bitty couldn’t make it up. The amount of work you need for a body like that! It’s exhausting to even think about. He even feels a little bad that, when push did literally come to shove back there, Parse was doing most of the work. But he doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d complain about it—is he? Bitty just doesn’t know him that well.

His hands are still on his hips. “Everyone has preferences, Bittle. Sometimes your preferences don’t count for that much.”

“And what the hell does that mean?” Bitty asks.

“No special meaning.” Finally, Parse drops his arms, and they just hang at his side like he isn’t sure what to do with them. “I just inhabit a place where what I want isn’t that important. Greater good, and all that. It’s not, I dunno, it’s not the arts.”

“What have you heard about the arts?”

“Well, I imagine they don’t tell you what to eat for breakfast.” He gives an awkward little wave. “Well, good night.”

Poor guy, Bitty thinks.

He goes to sleep thinking it, on Jack’s not-particularly comfortable couch, and he wakes up thinking it, sunlight cutting through the seams where the automatic shades don’t quite meet the window frame. He’s slept over at Jack’s maybe a dozen times, each time in the bed upstairs where the glare doesn’t hit until midday. From the couch, it creeps across the rug, the coffee table, the coffee table books Jack has stacked messily, but with intention: Bill Cunningham, _Tulsa_ , something about the maple farms of Quebec, _Ballad of Sexual Dependency_ , his dad. Now that Bitty’s forced to stare at the spines, he wants to neaten them, but he won’t. Jack is particular about his books in a way he’s not particular about his food or his clothes or his sex life, or the sheets in his closet or the things people say about him on campus: that he’s a drug addict (“I _am_ a drug addict”) or that he’s slept with half the faculty (“not nearly half, just a few”) or that his dad pulled strings to get him in (“it was my mom, she’s the one who went here”). It’s because the semester hasn’t begun yet that the coffee table isn’t absolutely stacked with library loans.

They’re not meant for show, these books, because the jackets are tatty and the pages are gray with fingerprints. _Bob Zimmermann: The Covers, 1976-1988_ is in the worst shape of all, and it’s easy to imagine Jack being given the book at a young age. It’s more or less the same as being forced onto a peewee football team and having your dad insist on coaching it, Bitty figures. Everyone’s got some story like that. What’s Parse’s story? Was his dad a hockey player? Bleary, Bitty grapples with his phone, hating that it’s only 7—then again, they all went to sleep pretty early. He must’ve been conked out from that pill.

On Wikipedia, it says nothing about Parse’s father. If Bitty were curious, he’d ask, but he’s happy knowing that if there was anything to know, it would be on there. Well, it’s not.

After a few minutes, Bitty’s resolve to fall back asleep has crumbled. Even with the air on and a vented duct right above him, the sateen sheet isn’t really breathable in direct sunlight, shade or no shade. Waking up lonely in someone else’s house is the worst feeling in the world. If you’re in bed with them, at least, you can reach in for a feel, try to get something going. But this morning, Bitty can’t imagine wanting any more than he’s already gotten; it feels like one of those dainty kilogram weights from science class is balanced on his head.

He’s quiet on the steps, presuming that if Jack and Parse were busy, they’d be making more noise. Correctly, it turns out; Parse is not even there. Jack is snoring a little, on odd exhumations. He does not look peaceful. He never looks peaceful. Should I get into bed with him? Bitty wonders. But then, what if Parse comes back? There is empty space and Jack’s body is curled around it. Something, that kilogram weight maybe, keeps Bitty from ascending the last few steps. Gravity helps him back down. It’s barely past 7, and he’s finally in the kitchen.

Jack has a goddamn Keurig, or—no, it’s a Nespresso. Well, it’s stupid either way, Bitty thinks, digging through a cabinet of nothing but boxed coffee pods. What the hell is “Master Origins”? Seems vague. One is purple, one is green. What the hell is “Aflorazio”? That one’s brown—no thank you. Another one, a different shade of brown, is muffin-flavored. That’s good enough. That’s what Bitty would drink at an actual coffee shop. PSLs are already at Starbucks. It’s fully humid outside, but soon they’ll be hawking eggnog lattes. It’s a soothing thought. Bitty lives for that garbage.

Coffee brewing, Bitty shuffles through the pantry, then the fridge. Parse, probably, has stocked it with many bottles of Gatorade Zero; there’s a tub of protein powder on the counter and a few protein bars, too. For the first time, scrounging around in the year-old unopened sacks of rice and bottles of bay leaves, Bitty wonders if Jack picked up his protein bar habit from Parse—if they eat the same brand or even the same flavor. Jack has mostly got maple doughnut—well, he would, wouldn’t he?—and a few carrot cake Larabars. It’s depressing, Bitty thinks. Why not a real carrot cake? Not that he cares for them, especially, but he could make one. If Jack had carrots, or cream cheese, Bitty would. Instead, he makes a quiche, because the ingredients are there, and because Parse said he ate eggs. That’s one thing Bitty remembers from the night previous. Frankly, he’s shocked that he does. What else has he retained? The cold weight of eggs in hand, he considers that it couldn’t have been more than a few breaths of connubial bliss, but in some sense it lasted a lifetime. Just one of those things where you’re getting off more so on the idea, really. Then again, what with the drugs, who’s to say?

Crushing leaves of butter between his knuckles. Stirring cider vinegar into cold water. Not bothering to search in vain for a bench scraper because of course Jack doesn’t have one, though Bitty wonders if he’d mind if Bitty left one here? People with nice kitchens never really use them. People don’t know what they have, they don’t use what they have—don’t appreciate, maybe. Well, Bitty doesn’t need a bench scraper; he doesn’t need pie weights, either, just this bag of Trader Joe’s basmati rice. He empties out his own pie plate, wraps the leftovers in foil. He’ll buy new rice for Jack, but it’s not like Jack is going to miss his old rice. It’s been in the pantry mocking Bitty for a year, every time he’s come over and rifled through looking for something to eat. All Jack has to eat is Larabars with their stupid umlauts and a whole bunch of pantry items Jack would never cook anyway. He’s only got butter because Bitty left it there. Ditto the eggs, ditto the vinegar.

Once the crust is blind-baking, Bitty steps back from the heat of the oven and sighs, deeply. The muffin coffee is disgusting; he kind of likes it. It’s an acquired taste, is all. Obviously people like it or they wouldn’t sell it. He imagines Jack going online and buying just giant assortments of coffee pods without reading what’s in them. God, would Annie’s Grubhub an iced pumpkin-spice latte with whipped cream? The kind of drink Jack rolls his eyes at. Jack Jack Jack. Jack Jack Jack Jack Jack. I’m not in love with him, Bitty thinks, and I’m not even lying to myself about it. I’m not jealous that he sleeps with other people and I’m not jealous of Parse. I don’t want a boyfriend. I don’t want Jack to be my boyfriend. I couldn’t date someone even if I wanted to, and if I wanted to it would be insane if the person I picked was even more of a disaster than me. God, I’m the one awake at—let’s check the microwave —a _quarter to 8_ on Labor Day Monday, whacking at pâte brisée on a quartz countertop that I’m going to roll out with a bottle of apple cider vinegar. Why am I even doing this?

Because you like it, some stupid voice in the back of Bitty’s head informs him.

“Yeah, I know I like it,” he says aloud. “I know, you don’t have to tell me.” Now he’s talking to himself. As soon as this shit’s in the oven, Bitty thinks, I’m making another muffin coffee because holy shit do I deserve it.

The only things Bitty has bothered to practice enough to get _really_ good at are the things he wasn’t supposed to be doing, or at least, the things that didn’t matter: baking, vlogging. He tries to imagine a third thing, doesn’t find it. Oh well. Sex is something you can get better at, Bitty reasons, watching the egg wash shine through the oven door. At the time, he didn’t really care that all he could manage was a shallow thrust or two. But thinking back it’s like, god, I could do better if I just did it again, again and again, like the way I lost my gag reflex, by learning to swallow. Nobody teaches you these things, you just have to learn them? By doing them? The custard is puckering around the edges, a deep pool in the middle. Maybe I’m still high, Bitty thinks. I usually don’t have the patience to watch a quiche bake. Next time someone offers me a drug I’ve never had before I’m saying no, Bitty promises himself, even knowing that obviously he’ll say yes because life is just a series of yesses that got him from place to place until he wound up here, watching the pucker expand upward and outward as the liquid at the center of the quiche shivers gently. That word “pucker” trips him up as soon as he realizes he’s thinking it. That’s for body parts, not pastries.

The thought is enough that when the front door cracks open, and Parse comes in glistening, a little jolt of pleasure goes up Bitty’s spine and he thickens, not all the way, but enough.

“You’re not making another pie,” Parse says, as if he’s ready to believe it.

“I was making a quiche. Or, I am making a quiche. See? Eggs.” Bitty gestures, with an elbow, at the carton.

“What’s in it?”

“Eggs. Some Greek yogurt I thinned out with whole milk. Crushed red pepper and Parmesan cheese.”

“That’s it?”

“Well, Jack doesn’t really have anything else to put in it. I’m literally using packets of things that came with a pizza. Maybe more than one pizza.”

“Okay.” From the stack on the counter, Parse has retrieved a protein bar. He looks at Bitty as he’s unwrapping it. “So it’s not a quiche so much as it’s like, just kind of some stuff you found?”

“You could be nice about it.”

Around a mouthful, Parse says, “Thanks.” He swallows. “You don’t _have_ to cook things. We can get something.”

“We get brunch at a place called Jerry’s sometimes? The wait is probably horrendous, or it will be later, but it’s still early, so maybe if we got out of the house—”

“I highly doubt Jack is going anywhere.” Parse smashes the wrapper in his hands; when he strides over to the trashcan to throw it away, Bitty sees where the sweaty streaks have dried on his biceps. “I’m taking a shower. If you want me to do anything, I dunno, I’ll be back in like, 10.”

“What could you possibly do?”

“Order food.”

“I’m making food!”

Parse says nothing, just heads back upstairs.

The quiche is done before Parse is, and it steams atop a burner, under the halogen light above the range. Bitty thrusts his fingers into the generous void between quiche and vent and watches as the wisps curl around his knuckles and then dissipate, curl and dissipate. Is he imagining the grace of this moment, the way the steam seems to want to tie bows around his fingers? It’s like how the night before, everything sparkled and Parse’s eyes changed color from platinum to mulberry. When he comes downstairs Bitty makes a point to look him in the eye, to check; he wants to call those irises gray, which is annoyingly generic. The toiletry caddy under Bitty’s bathroom sink is gray, not the eyes of a man you’ve had sex with. Still, other words evade him. Parse is flicking at the screen of his phone and wearing only boxers.

“How’s Jack?” Bitty asks.

Parse puts his phone down. It takes a moment for him to suggest, “Why don’t we bring him some quiche?”

Again, Bitty marches dutifully upstairs with the whole thing in hand; this time, Parse brings the forks. The quiche wouldn’t slice anyway; Bitty can tell from the way it wobbles and oozes that even if it had been allowed to cool to room temperature, there’s too much dairy in the custard, perhaps because the yogurt was thinned out too much, or maybe it was slightly too old and the protein chains have all frayed, giving way to seepage the way yogurt sometimes does when it’s trapped in a container in the fridge of a man whose relationship to food is tenuous, fraught at best. Using a dishtowel, not a particularly fresh one, to insulate his trembling hands from the hot ceramic, Bitty tells himself there was nothing he could have done, that with nothing to put in the quiche it just lacks structure.

“This isn’t a reflection of my _skill_ ,” Bitty says, pausing to look down at Parse behind him.

It’s a good angle at which to get a view of everything that’s not flush with his torso. “Of course not, the coffee shop charges six bucks a slice, and so on.”

“Six-fifty. I don’t sell them quiches, just pies.”

“What’s the difference? They’re in the same plate.”

“I use disposable tins if I’m selling my pies! I dunno, they never asked me to make a quiche.”

“You could ask them?”

“I’m not a bakery! I don’t have time to bake all day long, much as I might like to.” Through the towel, the tender undersides of Bitty’s fingers are heating up. “I gotta, you know. Make artwork. For school.”

“I’m just saying, if you’re good at something, and it’s profitable, lean into it.”

“And that’s personal advice, from you?”

“Yes. I’m just saying. Be proactive, Bittle.” He pushes his way up the stairs first.

Bitty doesn’t want to foist his baking onto Annie’s any more than he wants to eat eggy loose custard in bed, but what choice does he have? It is amazing that Jack is still asleep, what with all the showering and talking and Nespressos and clanging vinegar bottles into dough. When they sleep together, it’s Jack who marshals Bitty awake by mouthing him with intensity that builds from pleasant to raw, so that the line blurs between the boundaries of the confusing sex dreams these early machinations provoke, and the fuller state of all-in arousal that lets Jack mount him. Someone, maybe on the internet, would call it “dubious consent.” And, quite frankly, fine, if that’s how people feel; to Bitty, a benefit to sleeping with Jack is that he never has to ask.

A forkful of egg plops onto the bedspread and Bitty thinks, why didn’t I bring spoons?

It takes all of Bitty’s self-restraint, what little he’s got left by now, not to comment on the fact that Parse eats only the eggy part of the quiche, no crust. He skims his fork along the pastry surface and doesn’t look at Bitty at all while he’s eating it, although he does manage a quiet “thank you” before digging in.

Then there’s Jack, who is _so_ sleepy, and willing to accept no more than a bite or two from Parse’s fork. At least Parse lets some crust in there, when it’s Jack eating it.

“It’s so early,” Jack says, and it sounds somehow both hollow and miserable. Like he’s saying it with something in his mouth.

“I couldn’t sleep,” says Bitty. “So I just got up and made this quiche, I guess. I owe you a bag of rice.”

“Rice?”

“I used it for pie weights. To blind bake the crust.”

“So it won’t get soggy?”

All right, well, why waste energy on restraint? “There’s such a thing as a crustless quiche, by the way, like it doesn’t _need_ the crust strictly speaking.”

“Uh—”

“So I coulda made it without one, if I knew no one was gonna eat it.”

“How was I supposed to know you were going to make this, Bittle? I tried to tell you not to make breakfast—”

“Maybe I wanted to make breakfast!”

“Yeah, I know, we talked about it last night—I’m sorry you went to effort, it’s just the end of the summer so I’m doing a cut—I tried that melba thing, I know your crust is good.”

“This actually isn’t one of my better efforts, since I didn’t have time to let it rest and whatever, but—”

“I feel completely miserable,” Jack says, perhaps just to forestall further bickering. He does look it, Bitty thinks.

“Ah.” Parse grabs Jack at the toes—maybe Bitty should be horrified by how near his feet are to the quiche, but it’s not a very good quiche, anyway, and also frankly, at this point, fuck it. “Like, physically, mentally?” Parse starts rubbing the arch of Jack’s foot with the underside of his thumb. God, are they into some kind of foot stuff? There’s nothing wrong with that, but to Bitty it’s just, like, why? Are they? Oh god, they must be. Oh, lord.

“All ways.” Jack rubs his eyes.

Parse lets go of his foot. He’s never witnessed Jack so much as look at someone’s feet, and Bitty’s have been bare in Jack’s face more times than he can count, so—all right, probably not. He’s not sure why he’s relieved. Who cares what they do? Bitty would take a foot job if it got him somewhere. Seems harmless enough. Is there art about feet? Yes, there must be. I oughta Google that, he thinks. He tries to remember.

A few minutes later he’s downstairs rinsing the forks off, and he cannot recall for the life of him what he was supposed to remember. Crustless quiche recipes? God, he made a mess. Flour everywhere. Everything everywhere. There’s desiccated Parm chunks trapped where the lip of the sink meets the counter. Who’s gonna pry that out? Am I gonna do it? I wish I could remember what I was trying to remember, he thinks. Oh god, to hell with it, he realizes, Jack doesn’t care what’s trapped where in this kitchen. A voice in the back of his head snaps, “Dicky, you make sure you clean this up!” He cranks the tap up to full heat.

When Parse brings the half-eaten quiche to the sink, he’s fully dressed, or his version of fully dressed, basketball shorts and his franchise logo plastered across his chest. “That was great.” He sets the plate down. “Do you mind if we hang on to this? Maybe Jack will be hungry when he gets up.”

“Of course. I feel bad that he’s—”

“He’ll be fine. Eventually. I’ll be here.”

“Oh, that’s good. You’ll keep an eye on him.” Bitty pauses. “This has been lovely. I need to get home.”

“I’ll give you a ride.”

“I feel bad.”

“Yeah,” Parse agrees. “That’s the whole hangover thing.”

“I mean, getting a ride from you.”

“Why? I’ve got a car, you’ve got a walk home.” He nods at the sink. “And we should talk. I can get the rest of this. How many muffin K-pods did you drink?”

“They’re Nespressos.”

“What’s the difference?” As Bitty gapes at him, Parse says, “No, really, I don’t know.”

That’s probably the only thing he knows he doesn’t know, Bitty muses. He turns off the tap. Wipes his hands on his shorts. Sighs with a full-body heave. “I’ll get my stuff.” He rolls at the hip as he swivels toward his bag.

* * *

They take the elevator, which Bitty never has, since Jack only lives on the third floor. As the doors open, Parse says, “I keep forgetting to take the stairs,” almost an afterthought.

Bitty says nothing.

“I’m in a high-rise. Thirty-fourth floor. Kind of fake Spanish-style, almost? Three beds. Good views. Bad value. Vegas is deeply overpriced and incredibly ugly.”

The doors slide open; Bitty steps out around him.

“Oh, after you.”

The car is small; Bitty can’t envision Jack cramming his long body into it. Parse is shorter, but he couldn’t be much shorter; he’s still taller than Bitty. You figure these things out when you have sex with someone, let alone two people. That, and when you get in a car with them. Or when you get on an airplane, maybe—does Parse take regular airplanes, though? Or is it private jets for him? Hockey teams don’t travel all together on regular flights, do they? They can’t, right?

“Are you driving this back to Vegas? Seems pretty small for a road trip.”

“What makes you say that?” His hand is searching for the stick.

“Where’d you put your stuff? And there’s no room. Wouldn’t you feel trapped?”

“Well, I’m not driving it back west, it’s a rental.”

“You got another car?”

“I’m flying.”

“You ever been on a road trip? I haven’t—I mean, my mom drove me up here when I started grad school, but I don’t find that drive too exciting. Going out west, that must be real pretty? I’ve never been, so I just figure, maybe it’s a nice drive.” It’s impossible for Bitty not to think about all the things he knows and doesn’t know about Jack and Kent’s relationship; at some point they probably envisioned doing the drive together, Jack’s camera out the rolled-down window with the right lens, whatever that was, to get the dry, flat plains and the Rockies and the scrub bush of the desert. That’s the kind of thing Jack takes pictures of: vacancies, mostly. Places that could belong to anyone. It’s all the polar opposite of Jack’s teenage output, those creepy pictures of gashes in limbs and filthy clothes and so on—things that couldn’t just belong to anyone, that only belonged to Jack.

“Yeah,” Parse says. ”I’ve been on a road trip. Car ones. Hockey ones.” He shrugs. “Can we talk?”

“Is this not talking?”

Parse rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I meant about something specific.”

“Can we turn the air on? Like if we’re just gonna sit here—”

“No, I’m not sure if you’ve heard but leaving a car running is bad for the environment? Just open a window—”

“But the car’s off!”

“Open a door?”

“Maybe I should walk home?”

“No, just—ugh, open the glove compartment, there’s something in there for you.”

Dumbfounded, Bitty pulls the latch; at least Parse is starting the car. Being that it’s a rental, there’s some paperwork, and one package of something.

“The box is for you.” Somehow, Parse is adjusting the air while he wriggles out of the spot he’s parked in. There’s almost nowhere in Georgia you can’t just roll up and leave your car without having to deal with that, and Bitty truly has no clue how to parallel park without coming back to a nasty note on his windshield. Then again, he’s never driven a cute little sports car. He doesn’t see it for himself, really. What he notices, though, is that the full-on blast of freon in Parse’s face seems not to bother him in the least—well, figures, if he’s living in Las Vegas; that’s one thing they have in common, probably, an over-familiarity with air conditioning.

It’s some kind of drug, in this box.

“I think I remember how to get to your place,” Parse says, though he must have been there, what, a year ago? “Though I guess it doesn’t matter if we just cruise around a little. The town’s not that big, is it?”

“No, but around campus there’s a lot of weird one-ways and things. I can’t really tell you, ’cause I don’t drive around here either.”

“We’ll figure it out.” He drives with the palm of one hand on the wheel, his other on the gear shift. Okay, they both drive manual, that’s something else they have in common.

It’s a nice, competent thing to know how to do, Bitty always thought. Kinda of macho, like, only someone who really got cars would get driving stick. This isn’t true, obviously; it’s more hick than macho, isn’t it. The box in his lap—not sure if Parse is going to talk about it or not, or even if that’s the thing he said he wanted to talk about. Bitty figures there’s actually a U-shaped class spectrum of stick-shift drivers; it’s only real nice cars (like this one) or real shit cars (like the ones Bitty drove back home) that have manual transmissions.

Finally, once they’re skirting the main drag, Parse exhales. His palm slides down over the wheel and he grips it, suddenly. “That’s an opioid antidote. It’s nasal spray. If anything ever happens when you’re with Jack.”

“What ever would happen,” Bitty says, though he’s suddenly got a pretty clear idea.

“I trust you.”

“Yeah. Well, thanks.”

“No, thank you.”

“I haven’t done anything yet?”

“But you must have some clue, right?”

They are distinctly cruising down the same street a second time. “Just because I’m from Nowhere Georgia doesn’t mean I know a bunch of opioid addicts.”

“Okay? Well, guess what? Now you know one.”

“I’m not saying I know everything about Jack, but I feel like if he was injecting drugs I’d have noticed.”

“Well, first of all, who’s to say he’d be injecting them? But more what I mean is, you gotta know how addiction works, right? Just because he’s not doing it now doesn’t mean he wouldn’t.”

“Have you given this stuff to Shitty and Lardo?”

Kent shakes his head. Finally, they’ve turned onto Bitty’s street. Seems like a normal Labor Day Monday: some kettle grills smoking in the yards; the drama Chads whipping bags across their lawn. The house on the end of the block—a frat, by the painted bed sheet hanging from the second story windows; Bitty knows zilch about Greek letters, just sees them leave red cups strewn across their porch most weekends—is open at every door and window. Kent slides the gear into park, turns off the car, opens a window. Bitty does, too.

Parse takes a breath. “You want to know what Bob Zimmermann said to me, like, while his son was fucking going through withdrawal? He was like, oh, we thought he was messed up in a _fun sexy_ way. I’m like not even 19 and this guy is giving me this shit. I don’t think they’re bad people, but like, as parents they are completely beyond worthless. Shitty and Lardo can only do so much. Once you’re sleeping with someone you probably see enough of them to know when something’s wrong. You’re staying over at Jack’s a lot? There’s one of those in the master bathroom—it’s under the sink. Hang on to that one. That’s all.”

“Oh, that’s all?” Bitty asks. But what he’s thinking is, wow. Wow wow wow wow wow.

“To some extent this is for me, you know? The distance—it just helps to know someone’s here.”

“But I’m not a babysitter.”

“No, but I think the kind of guy who’d bring a pie to a threeway isn’t such a bad proxy.”

“Well, I’m not a proxy, either! Jesus, it’s hot in this car.”

“I’m not turning the air on.”

“Jack is great, but I’m not here to be your proxy or whatever trying to keep him off drugs.”

“I’m not saying keep him off them, like, he’s obviously not _off_ them. Just if he starts taking heroin, and something goes wrong, jam that thing up his nose so he doesn’t die, okay?”

“Yeah, okay, I will, but—”

“It’s not hard, okay! Why are you making it hard!”

“ _I’m_ making it hard? You’re making me responsible for your guilt complex over being in Las Vegas playing fucking hockey and you’re making me sit in this hot car and telling me I have to be responsible for someone else’s drug addiction because I’m sleeping with him. You guys are making it hard, I’m not making it hard.”

“Just say yes, Bittle, jesus.”

“Yes! Yes, okay, fine, if he overdoses on heroin while we’re fucking I’ll put your goddamn spray up his nose!”

“Fine, thanks, that’s all I wanted! You’re right, it is fucking hot in this car. Feel free to go, if you want. I’m not ungrateful.”

Bitty’s clutching the door handle—but he lets go. Something in his brain is making it hard to just get out of the car. “You got a funny way of showing gratitude, you know.”

“What do you want, an award? Or, a reward, maybe? I mean, other than the distinct pleasure of sharing Jack’s hole with me. You want money? I’ll get Jack to give me your info, Venmo you whatever.”

“I use the Cash App.”

“God, of course you do. Well, fine. Maybe I’ll just go to an ATM and get actual money, you know, like I’m twelve. I can leave it at Jack’s.”

“I’m not going to take money from you!”

“Well, you should, I’ve got plenty, and from the looks of your place over here you could probably use it.”

Bitty knows he should be insulted, but the thing is, if Kent does somehow manage to pay him, well, Bitty’s not too good to turn down money. In his not-too-distant, shameless past, he probably would have just named a price right here, and sucked Kent’s dick again for good measure. But it’s so hot, and he’s so tired, and the car is so cramped—who would bother bending over at a time like this?

For a moment, it’s quiet.

Then, Bitty says, “This is awful surreal.”

“Yes,” Parse agrees, “although your serotonin dropping off probably makes it a lot weirder for you than it is for me.”

“Yeah. But it is still weird, I get it. Or, well—you did _make_ it weird, I guess, but we all had a nice time. You obviously shouldn’t have to pay me to use this, I mean, lifesaving comes standard, really, right? I just go back and forth between getting it, kind of, and not getting it at all—but I guess someone who lives on the thirty-eighth floor _would_. That said, I ain’t above some postcoital niceties, but I’d never take actual money. I mean, not anymore.”

“Thirty-fourth.”

“Well, whichever!” There’s now actual sweat stinging Bitty’s eyes.

“There’s worse things to get paid in for sex. I mean, heroin, for one thing.”

“Oh god, really? That’s so trashy!”

One of Parse’s brows shoots up; interesting, Bitty thinks, that he can do that. “Is it?”

Bitty can’t help but gape. God, the front of his tank is soaked through. “Isn’t it? I’m obviously not too good for sex and drugs, but at some point, it’s like, they’re just drugs? All they do is make you feel kind of good temporarily.”

“Okay, by that logic, Sex is a drug. Food is a drug. Hockey is a drug. Art is a drug. Love is a drug.” It’s an awfully long list, Bitty thinks, as Parse is rattling them off. “Like, taking care of people is a drug. Pain is a drug. Working out is a drug. Spending money is a drug. Being a smarmy little shit is a drug. Everything’s a fucking drug, you know? I tell myself this while I’m bleeding out my mouth because some goon slammed me in the face because he didn’t like the way I looked at his goalie, or took the puck off his buddy. We all do stuff to stop us thinking about the big things, you know? Jack’s drugs just happen to be drugs. It keeps me awake at night, but I’m in the self-harm industry. I can’t pretend like I’ve got it figured out so much and he doesn’t. I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

“Yes, a little bit.”

“Just, people can treat him like he’s trash because he’s got this shit, but everyone’s got shit. I don’t know what your shit is, Bittle, but I saw that pie. I think you get me.”

What Bitty gets most of all is that this guy sure knows how to give a good little speech. He wonders how many people Parse has said this to. “Why do I feel like I’m getting a fucking shovel talk?”

“Because you are, I guess? I mean, I know what Jack is, but I think you know, too. If something happened to him, and I wasn’t there?” He pauses. He taps the steering wheel with his fingertips. He sighs. “I think what I’m trying to say is, I’m glad he’s got someone.”

“Well, I mean, we’re not—”

“I know, but just like, in general.”

“Jack’s got tons of people—”

“It’s not really the same, though, right? You know what I mean. I told you what his dad said.”

“I guess!” It’s a lot, god, it’s so much. “Just let me go here,” Bitty says. “If they see me get outta this thing, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

* * *

The porch is neon green, neon yellow, pale gold layered over the grease stains and paint drips and water damage and sun bleach already laid atop the white stain that someone once applied—possibly the landlord, probably not realizing these slats would never be in good condition again. The canvasses Lardo was prepping yesterday lean against the Haus façade; the aerosol scent has mostly dispersed.

Shitty is screwing a swing into the rafters.

“We have a stepladder?” Bitty asks. He doesn’t remember his MDMA hangover until he sits on the porch and realizes, fuck, I’ve got this stupid Narcan in my back pocket.

“Yeah.” Shitty hops down; the swing sways a little. It could fit two people. It’s looks teak now, from over here, but it’s probably not that nice. Georgia is the global epicenter of porch living. Bitty envisions a future of creative cigarette-burn patterns in the cushion. “Irresponsible not to.”

“Ha,” Bitty says, not even thinking it’s funny. The irony digs into his brain like the bridge in a song. “Yeah, right. Okey doke.”

“You okay?”

Bitty gets to his feet as Lardo comes out onto the porch with her power drill.

“Fine! Never better.” He is going to bed, and he is not getting up until the semester starts. “You were right,” he says to Lardo, who’s looking back and forth from him to Shitty.

“What?” she asks.

“You were right,” Bitty repeats. “That wasn’t an orgy.”

**Author's Note:**

> There are more stories to tell about this AU, so -- series, maybe? Maybe. Please go talk to [Tomato](https://tomatowrites.tumblr.com/) if you want to hear about Dex's gay lobster novel.


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